Ron and Hermione

[dfrankis at dial.pipex.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 20724

Responding (but not soft-linking) to a number of recent threads.

Ron and Hermione rate each other enormously.  It's easy for us to 
forget this in the day-to-day aggro about the firebolt and the ball.  
Each knows that, when the chips are down, they can count on the 
loyalty of the other.

When Snape takes the DADA lesson and criticises Hermione for being a 
know-it-all, it's Ron who gets detention for defending her.  He has 
earned the right to call her a know-it-all - Snape hasn't.

When Ron (and Harry) have messed up and shut her in with the troll, 
she takes the blame for them.

It is because of the expectations generated by this underlying 
strength of friendship that they have such strong disputes.  You 
couldn't imagine Harry having an I'm-not-speaking-to-you dispute with 
Snape or Draco, or even Dean.

The problem Ron and Hermione have is that they don't show any 
appreciation of each other in day-to-day things.  So when Hermione 
buys Crookshanks, Ron interprets this in the light of his own pet as 
a signal that she doesn't care about him personally.  He can reason 
that if she did, she would also care about Scabbers, and would take 
his safety seriously.  Hermione, on the other hand, while ready in 
principle to look after Scabbers' safety, is expecting Ron first to 
respond to Crookshanks on the basis that he is her choice.  Ron 
doesn't, and she can reason that he doesn't care about the things 
that she wants.  The rest of the Scabbers-Crookshanks argument is 
then almost inevitable.

Interestingly, Harry has the same basic mutual respect for both, and 
is little better in his day-to-day appreciation of either of them, 
but he has the edge because he sees their points of view.  That 
moderates his hostility to Hermione over the Firebolt, and gives him 
a degree of detachment overthat and over who invites whom to the 
ball.  He also has less (felt) need for appreciation, being used to 
doing without.

It's easy to say that once you have cleared all this out of the way, 
the field is wide open for a romantic relationship, either R/H, or 
H/H, or with outside people.  This would be true if romance existed 
on a separate plane independent of life.  In fact (IMO), Ron and 
Hermione's mutual frustration at not hearing the appreciation they 
want from each other is actually drawing them together.  Harry's 
detachment is taking him out of the frame.  This is why it is hard to 
interpret Hermione's comments and body language over Fleur.  It's not 
that she has feelings for Ron and so is jealous, or just that she is 
contemptuous of Ron's behaviour - rather, her reaction to his 
behaviour is what is *creating* her feelings.

David, jumping into the water